The Power and Magic of Lean
by Norman Bodek

From superfactory.com http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2006/09/course_correcti.html

22 September 2006

Course Correction Complements of Norman Bodek

I’m on my way back from a very successful Lean Accounting Summit, and I’m
sure Bill and I will have more on this in the near future.

One major highlight for me was dinner with the father of lean in America,
Norman Bodek, and then listening to his lunchtime keynote on Friday. I’ve heard
him speak a couple times, and have enjoyed several conversations with him in
the past. You are initially enthralled by the first-person stories of working
with the titans of lean… Shingo, Ohno, and others. But when Norman begins to talk about how he simply wants to help people learn, and how he
believes that lean practitioners have forgotten that only half of the Toyota
Production System is about waste elimination and that the other half is respect
for people, you realize he is someone truly special. There is genuine goodness
in this man, powerful enough to make many of us look inside ourselves to see
how we measure up.

His keynote was great, to the extent that some attendees apparently asked if
next year’s Summit

could include an
entire “Bodek Track”. All Bodek, all the time, to paraphrase a cable channel
ad. He focused on the other half of TPS… respect for people, and his comments
made you think. Why has Toyota not
laid anyone off since 1950, even in tough years, but GM and Ford this year
alone will lay off tens of thousands? Why is inventory measured and reported
down to the penny, but an organization’s most important asset, the knowledge
and creativity of people, is nowhere on a balance sheet? The underutilization
of people is one of lean’s forms of waste, but where is it measured? Human Resources,
HR, used to be “HRD”… Human Resources Development. No longer. What happened to
the “D”? “We must bring back the ‘D’!” Lean companies, such as Toyota,
have extremely high levels of employee involvement… such as suggestion programs
that average several implemented ideas per month per employee resulting in over
$8,000 in savings per employee per year. He ended by having the 500 attendees
stand up and swear that they will go back and make a difference.

At least some of us will.

At a time when companies like HP are dealing with spying on employees and GM
and Ford are shedding tens of thousands of years of knowledge, Norman Bodek
helps recalibrate us to what is really important. Many of us have focused on
the tools, the planning, and the obsession with waste reduction… and have
forgotten that the respect for people is just as important. I know I have,
especially as I deal with some difficult people issues at a couple
organizations I’m working with. Talking to, or more accurately listening to, Norman has reminded me about what is truly important. It came at an opportune time.

Mark Graban interviewed me this past week for his first Podcast. We talk about my discovery of Quick and Easy Kaizen, how it was the heart of the Toyota system - getting all employees involved in continuous improvement. The puzzle to me is why every company doesn't add this most valuable process to their management lexicon. We say that "People are our most valuable asset." but we do very little to develop that asset to its fullest.

China does represent a shorterm labor savings but in the long term we are giving away our companies to them. This week I was watching parts of the Tour de France bicycle race on television and saw one of the leaders on a Giant bike.

At one time over fifteen years ago, Schwin was probably America's leading bicycle company. They went to Taiwan to manufacture their bikes to take advantage of the low labor cost. The company in Taiwan was Giant. Initially, Schwin wanted to reduce their assembly costs but Giant convinced them to also save money on engineering and every other phase of manufacturing and design. After ten years or so when the initial contract was over, Giant told Schwin, "We don't need you anymore. We know how to make great bikes, you taught us how." All we have to do is learn how to market the bikes. "Shortly, thereafter Schwin went bankrupt and sold their "name," to another American company.

Unfortunately, we are great in short term thinking. Toyota recognizes the threat from China but they are building more and more automobiles in America. If they can do it why can't other American companies do it? To me the only difference in Toyota and American manufacturers is that Toyota develops their people and the best way to develop people is from their own creative ideas.

Please do listen to the podcast at http://kanban.blogspot.com/2006/07/leanblog-podcast-1-norman-bodek.html

An associate of mine (Jim McKinley) here in the Pensacola area sent me a
copy of your reply to his question about "The Gemba Walk" article and I
thought I would say hi. I produced a seminar in Orlando for you several
years ago using racing pit stops to improve manufacturing changeovers. I
have since carried this concept around the world several times.
You seem to still be making a difference in manufacturing and I
congratulate you for this. Your Gemba walk concept is much more useful than
Management by Walking Around without a plan! It seems to complement Myron
Tribus' "Planning the Quality Visit" concept
(http://deming.ces.clemson.edu/pub/den/quality_visit.pdf ).

Stan Adams
Time Dimension

The difference between a great performance and a poor performance is that we can learn much more from the poor performance.

Many years ago, I visited Italy on my birthday, August 12th, and stayed at the Villa San Michele, a small luxurious hotel in Fiesole situated on a cliff with breathtaking views of Florence. The villa, attributed to Michelangelo, once a 15th century monastery housing Catholic nuns with very tiny rooms, afforded us a breakfast never to be forgotten. For it is was here, the morning of my birthday, that I received a special gift to eat with absolute pleasure the world's greatest croissants. It was absolutely memorable. My taste buds literally exploded. But, alas for now, wherever I go and order croissants I am always disappointed in the comparison.

In 1978, I went on my first trip to Japan almost totally lost by the language barrier. Forever hopeful though, I ordered each morning croissants with eggs, only to be again and again disappointed. I knew at the time that Japanese products were being noticed as having greater and greater quality but that sense of quality did not reach their bakers of croissants. Italy, especially Fiesole had nothing, as yet, to worry about.

Well, quality improvement over these past twenty some odd years has surely penetrated throughout Japan. While Japan 50 years ago was noted as only making "junky" products, we can all attest to the high quality automobiles, the fine Nikon and Canon digital cameras, the excellent Sony and Nippondenso games, the superior machine tools, their extraordinary electronic products, and many other high quality items manufactured in Japan. As quality has improve enormously in Japan, in almost every aspect of their lives, I felt assuredly that one day soon croissants would be baked equal to those I once experienced many years ago.

Not to be totally disappointed, on my last trip to Japan a few months ago, I stayed at the new Oriental hotel in downtown Tokyo. The room was magnificent with a great view of Tokyo, high definition television, most comfortable of beds, and the "piece d'resistance," a marble bathroom with three shower heads, sunken Jacuzzi tub, and a computerize la bode fit for a seventeenth century European monarch. With baited breath, I rose and drifted to the breakfast room with hope that my thirty years of searching for a comparable croissant was to be found.

It was dazzling! The croissants were great. I ate them with much appreciation but still even though they were the finest eaten in the last thirty years, they were not yet exactly equal to those once tasted in Fiosele. Italy was being challenged by Japan but still ahead in the race.

I now live in Vancouver, Washington overlooked by the great Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens truly America's visual splendor. But, unfortunately, I have never found a croissant that comes even close to Japan or that great one discovered years ago on my birthday.

But, I don't give up. I do live with hope that America will once again discover that a democracy can only exist when its people realize the vital importance of having a quality of work life, and living a quality of life and that the heart of great quality is to be able to eat a great croissant.

---------

I do hope you like my story and want me to write more about the importance of quality in our lives. I especially want to write about the quality of work life, what it means and how it can be attained by all. Please do cheer me on. Thank you,

He Ain't Dead Yet

(Norm's home town) APICS
chapter. The announcement reads
more like a eulogy than anything else, but believe me, Norm is very much alive
and well, and rabble rousing all over the world.

He joins Armand Feigenbaum, James Harrington and Mohammed Zairi in receiving
the award - all three are guys who have had a global impact on manufacturing
quality. As good as the other recipients are, they should feel honored by
having Norm join the exclusive club.

Any Superfactory readers who live near Portland

ought to try to make it out there. For the rest of you, it seems like an
excellent time to fire off an email to Norm, letting him know that you are with
him in spirit, even if you've never met him before. He deserves the
thanks, respect and admiration of all of us. You know, they don't call him 'The
Godfather of Lean' for nothin' .

Something’s
been on my mind the last day or so – You’ve no doubt seen people commenting
that Toyota doesn’t practice what they preach when it comes to respect for
people – I don’t know offhand all the anecdotal evidence, but it seems to be
like someone is addressed rudely, or Japanese employees are respected more than
American ones.

Seems
to me that “respect” might have a semantic effect here, especially because it’s
something translated from a Japanese idea – even deeper, a feeling that is
largely culturally determined.

A
couple of possibilities – it might be true that respect for people actually
means respect for some people. Or do Americans take respect to
mean positive responses to ideas, softness of approach, patience in the face of
disagreements, while Japanese mean it’s OK to snap back and reject your idea
because you aren’t going to take it personally, or you will feel humbled and in
need of learning, but not humiliated, or something like that? If it’s a pillar,
do we understand the nuances meant in each culture?

I
know that you’ve written about this in great volume and I could probably find
the answer if I re-read a lot, but thought I’d take a shortcut and ask you
directly.

First, what is amazing is that "Respect for
People," is the second pillar of Toyota's
success. Ohno was absolutely ruthless, employees and suppliers
lived in fear of him. However, an employee was never laid off and a
supplier never went bankrupt. Employees grew strong and suppliers became
very profitable, almost all suppliers are world class leaders. Ohno might
have been ruthless in one sense but he focused on developing people and
suppliers. They might have resented him while he was alive, for he was
very hard, but in retrospect they treasure what he did for them.

Toyota became the leader in the world from Shingo's and Ohno's teachings.

What do we mean by "Respect for People?" Do
I really respect you when I let you work every day without growing? Do I
respect you when I can lay you off at any time?

Toyota empowers
people: To stop the line - to stop every other worker
from working - that is real respect and trust. To implement creative improvement ideas around
their work area. They trust you to come up with the best idea to make
your work easier and more interesting. You don't have to wait for
management to tell you what to do. By asking people to solve problems and become problem
solvers. Managers in the West normally tell people what to do and rarely
ever ask them and listen to their ideas. Listening and empowering people
to implement their own ideas are the key to real respect. And develops and educates them - they
continually train you on the job and will pay for your college education.

Does the system work as well in the West as it does in Japan?
I don't think so.

Toyota is
very cautious in working with us.

Yes, you are right, management in the West is very careful
not to criticize or offend the workers. Remember the workers in Japan had lifetime employment. Like a father with a child, sometimes you are
tough with them to help them grow and succeed in life and you might not be as
tactful as you should be. Of course, there are people at Toyota in both America and Japan that
are not totally happy with their work. Work in a factory is not easy and
is often not joyous but Toyota probably better than others is moving in a very
positive direction to develop their employees, make great products and to help
the world all at the same time.

When we meet this week we will have a chance to dialog more
on this subject. We will address what I believe is the real meaning of
"Respect for People."

1.Spotlessness - Get everyone involved in looking around them and
begin to clean up their work area, like being in the Army when you know the
General is coming or when you know that a guest is coming to your house, you
tend to put things in visual order.

2. Order - Like with the 5 S technique you want everything to be kept at
a certain place, well marked, easy to find, visually pleasing, easy to spot
defectives, and easy to tell the number of items in front of you. When
you consider that the next person to receive your work is your customer you
want them to receive things nicely. When you send someone some candy, you
don't pile up it up; Imagine receiving a box of candy with the chocolates
just piled on top of each other.

3. Pre-set – only what is needed is in front of you, tools exactly
placed, easy to reach, and marked. You take only those parts you need to
be assembled. Start off with a small batch. Say you are going to
build 100 items, take only 10 of each and assemble only ten; use a template to
place the parts on and when you assemble the 10 items, if any parts are left over there
is a chance you might have missed using that one part and you only have ten to items to re-check.

4. Pre-inspect – take just an extra second and inspect every part before
you use it. Stop and watch your fellow worker to see if they are
pre-inspecting. You can learn a lot just by looking.

5. Do it – assemble it precisely in the best way
possible. Learn standard work which is to have in front of you the exact
instructions of how to do your work with precision. Check your quality
standards and note down any discrepancies.

6. Post-inspect – stop for a second to make sure the work you did
was done exactly right. Make sure that there are no scratches, no mars,
no burrs, and that no defects will be passed on to your customer.

7. Order – check that the exact number of items needed is going to be
past on to your customer. When I first moved to Portland Oregon I went to shop at a Safeway
Supermarket Food Store. I spent just a few minutes as the sight was so
unpleasing. A few years later while running a workshop on customer
service one of the attendees told me what great customer service they received
at a Safeway. At first, I couldn't believe it but the attendee insisted
that I go back and check. What a pleasant surprise to see such a spotless
and immaculate store. Safeway has seven attributes which I will write
about in the next article. But, Safeway insures spotlessness by having
one of their managers take every single hour of the working day a walk around
the store just looking to make sure that everything is in exact order.
It only takes a few minutes but what a powerful way to insure that the store
stays spotless - try it in your company.

Once you have gone through the first seven steps than our challenge is to
really go after zero defects through our poka-yoke devices. Talk to you
about this a little bit later.

Best,

Norman Bodek

And please do read my two new books: Rebirth of American Industry and JIT
IS FLOW.

Fifteen years ago I had Mr. Hirano’sJIT
Implemental Manual translated into English. It was a great masterpiece for anyone
serious about implementing JIT. To create
a deep impression in serious students of JIT, we sold the two set manuals for
$2000. This was the highest price set of
books ever published by Productivity Press, and we sold “bundles” of them
without a single complaint on the value to the customer. We felt that if they would pay that high a
price they would go out and do JIT on the factory floor.

JIT Is Flow is Hirano and
Furuya’s latest publication and I believe gives us for the first time in the
West an extensive practical overview of JIT/Lean. This book is a wonderful addition to Jeffrey
Liker’s The Toyota Way, and books by
James P. Womack and others. I am sure
that Mr. Ohno and Dr. Shingo would have approved.

Here is a book, actually a
manual in book form that can be used to drive your lean efforts. It is a “jewel,” packed with information
adding extensively to what was contained in the JIT Handbook. I believe the best way to use this book to
your advantage is to read it in study groups. Then see if you can get teams of managers, engineers and employees to
read a few chapters; then attempt to implement those ideas immediately. You will learn by doing it. The power is in the doing!

“JIT truly is flow—and flow is
best medicine in a disruptive ultra-competitive world. This book covers all the bases in telling
how. And don’t miss the insightful
24-page interview at the end. I think
the trailing interview with Erik Hager is great.” Richard J. Schonberger, author orJapanese Manufacturing
Techniques: Nine Hidden Lessons in Simplicity, The World Class Manufacturing:
The Lessons of Simplicity Applied and World Class Manufacturing: The Next
Decade

“Going through this book has
been a rewarding experience. Hirano's "5 Pillars of the Visual
Workplace" and "JIT Implementation manual" were classics.
They contained detailed descriptions of the techniques and clear instructions
that could be immediately implemented on the shop floor. However they
were also very prescriptive and not so easy to adapt to other sectors.
This book brings out the depth of the thought process behind Hirano's
work. The know-why and the know-how that is contained in this book will
be extremely useful to every business in today's scenario. The clarity
which Hirano brings to each aspect of the transformation to JIT / Lean and the
delineation of the principles involved will be invaluable to every leader
and manager aiming for business excellence.

It is an amazing book. This is another feather in your cap. Best wishes for the success of this book - and may there be many more.” T. V. Suresh, President, Tao Consulting, Chenai, India

“JIT IS
FLOW is the best lean manufacturing book for study groups that I have
ever encountered.” Doug Nelson, CFPIM,
CIRM, CSSBB, President, APICS, Portland Chapter

“JIT IS
FLOW” gets back to the 'basics' of lean. The book goes right to the heart
of 'why' we focus on waste (long-term competitiveness & profitability), as
opposed to making waste reduction a short-term, cost-savings-based exercise. By
understanding the principles behind the tools, we can begin the journey toward
REAL change, & REAL success. I plan to recommend this book to every
management team I work with. Bill Kluck,
President, NWLEAN, Inc.

“This is a great book. It provides a
comprehensive step-by-step approach to the tools of Lean Manufacturing and
demonstrates that Lean must be lead by a commitment to change and a positive
approach to innovation. I encourage every manager that is motivated to
get results to read this book!” Collin McLoughlin, President, Enna Inc.

"JIT is FLOW"
is a great HOW To manual for any organization looking for the competitive
advantage. This should be a required Text for all business
schools! Hirano is an Icon and is still ahead of his time.” David McGiverin, Process Engineer, DCI
International

Other
books from PCS Press: The Idea Generator – Quick and Easy Kaizen,Kaikaku
– The Power and Magic of Lean (A Shingo prize winner), All You Gotta Do
Is Ask,and Rebirth of American Industry. The press can obtain copies of books by contacting Norman Bodek at
360-737-1883 or bodek@pcspress.com, others can buy the book at www.pcspress.com.

-- The
old saying, "as General Motors (GM) goes, so goes the nation.” Whoops! Last year GM lost 8.45 billion dollars. What does that mean for American industry? While GM was losing all of that money,Toyota will probably make over 11 billion and have over 50
billion dollars in cash. What happened
to GM and can we learn from Toyota’s
success?

In this exciting new book Rebirth of American Industrywritten by William H. Waddell and
Norman Bodek, you will see clearly the mistakes made at GM and how Toyota has avoided those pitfalls. While GM focused on “profits this quarter,” Toyota had a long term vision, learned how to please their
customers and delivered high quality automobiles.

“This excellent book will make some enemies. It is outspoken,
hard-hitting, and correct.” Brian Maskell, President
of BMA Inc., - author
of Putting Performance Measurement to
Work

“Rebirth
puts American management on the carpet; showing how modern accounting drives
American companies to non-lean measures. It clearly demonstrates why American manufacturers continue to come up
short when compared to their lean competitors. If unheeded, it could be the
epitaph of a once-great manufacturing powerhouse.” Bill
Kluck, President, The Northwest Lean Networks

Rebirth of American Industry: A Study of Lean
Management. The book traces the evolution of
manufacturing management along two lines: that pioneered by Henry Ford, then
furthered by Toyota to its modern level of success; versus that
originated by Alfred Sloan and others at General Motors still in practice in
most American companies today. The latter system of management proves to
be the underlying cause of the current failure of American manufacturing to
compete.

Foreword written by Dr. Thomas Johnson, author of Relevance Regained,
and Relevance Lost, said “In Rebirth
of American Industry, William Waddell and Norman Bodek provide a long
overdue revision to the standard historical interpretation of the financial
control system that DuPont brought to General Motors” which “ has been touted by business gurus such as Peter Drucker and
Tom Peters and by leading graduate business schools as the gold standard of
good management in American business from the 1950s to the present day.” And, “
Waddell's and Bodek's book helps mark the way by making us more mindful than
ever of the pitfalls that lie waiting if we continue to follow the precepts of
Sloan-style financial management.” “Indeed, so long as top managers remain committed to the
manage-by-results ‘Sloan culture,’ Waddell and Bodek believe that companies
have no hope of adopting the "lean culture" that permeates Toyota's remarkably successful system.”

"Before a rebirth is
possible, the leaders of American industry have to wake up. The ideas in
this book ring out clear and loud like a bell. This
book is required reading for anyone who is committed to taking manufacturing
into the future." Jon Miller, President Gemba Research
LLC

“I
read your book “Rebirth of American
Industry” with much interest. The history you lay out and the process of manufacturing that got us to
the 1970s is informative and interesting. It is not enough to just say it is a good book. It should be required reading for all
business schools and master programs. Carly Murdy, Director, UAW Education
Department

Other
books from PCS Press: The Idea
Generator – Quick and Easy Kaizen,Kaikaku – The Power and Magic of Lean
(A Shingo prize winner), All You Gotta Do Is Ask,and JIT
IS FLOW. The press can obtain a
copy of Rebirth by contacting
Norman Bodek at 360-737-1883 or bodek@pcspress.com.
Others may buy the book from http://www.pcspress.com

In a few weeks I will have a new book published titled JIT IS FLOW. The following is the foreword to the book:

Foreword to JIT IS FlOW

JIT
IS FlOW reminds me of a brief interchange with a Toyota veteran in the late 1990s. After a long
career beginning in 1946, he retired, having lived through the development of
the system described in JIT IS FlOW. He could not remember any milestone events,
but knew that from the outset the objective had been to make maximum use of the
only asset

Toyota had, its
people. Making material flow quickly
through production was only one aspect of the system. Fast, visible flow made people watch quality
constantly and generate improvement ideas frequently. Thinking at work is necessary because
conditions are always changing, and the parts of the system reinforce each
other to speed learning as things change. Finally he noted that despite going to factories every day, he could
never fully understand the system. “Every day I learn something new about it.”

That is the spirit of this
book. Hiroyuki Hirano and Makoto Furuya,
the authors, obviously have long first-hand experience with the Toyota
Production System, both using it and coaching it. Their explanations are both simple and
profound, the mark of deep experience. Readers new to the system will easily grasp the basic ideas, while those
that have worked with it a long time will spot insights that had not occurred
to them before. Like Alice in Wonderland, readers are apt to
learn from it according to the experience they bring to the reading – and
perhaps see something new each time they re-thumb it. That makes JIT IS FlOW a book to keep on the shelf.

This kind of insight is difficult to
convey in one’s native language. When it
is translated from Japanese, something is inevitably lost, but the translation
of JIT IS FlOW crosses that divide
pretty well. For example, the passage in
Chapter 5 on “People Love Making Things” was obviously hard to express in
English. The gist of it is that full
engagement in process improvement requires that people love what they do so
much that they can’t wait to come in each day and try some different idea. They do not work just for the money. Some, if they did not need money to live on,
would come to work every day because they like the challenge. It becomes a vital part of their life.

When hiring people, love of the work
is a difficult selection criterion to apply, but it is worth the time and patience
to try. For most of us, the notion dawns
slowly that this system of work is really about the development of people
throughout their working life. When
developing people, each person is discovered to be an individual; no two
alike. That is why leadership of this
kind of working system is specific to each site, each one having unique
problems, processes, and especially, people working there. The system principles may be general, but
applying them is a new learning exercise every time.

So take your time mulling over
Hirano and Furuya’s thinking. Take it in
sips, reflecting on your own experience while digesting the essence of
theirs. As a leader of process
improvement, you too should come to truly enjoy learning something new every
day.

Hiroyuki Hirano and Makoto Furuya: JIT IS FLOW - Practice and Principles of Lean ManufacturingHirano, is assisted by Furuya, are truly masters of Lean manufacturing. Many things will be clarified and new things about Lean will surprise you. This is a great book to read in groups to move your Lean efforts forward quickly. Filled with 72 figures and charts.